11 January 2012

The AARP Are Spamming Again

The American Association of Retired Persons (AARP.org) have an unfortunate history of spamming. Their IPs and domain have been blacklisted more than once, and it appears they are up to their old tricks again.

Sketchy Sending Domain & IP

The sending domain, SOCIAL-PATH.INFO is fairly new, recently changed, and is hosted on IP 176.53.113.82, and IP owned by SUNUCU.ORG of Istanbul Turkey. The domain is also blacklisted at Spamhaus and SURBL

AFFILIATE SPAM

As is often the case in affiliate spam, this sets off a long series of browser redirections from URL to URL, usually too fast for the average users to be able to see. Google Chrome offers a way to track such things. I've included the full list, below, but will highlight a few of the domains and sites involved, and identify their owners, first.

The Clickthrough-Runaround

Then we are sent to clickbooth.com, owned by the same company. Another click is paid for - each hop earns someone (the sender/affiliate and the affiliate program owner) some money.

Then, off to sctracking.com - another domain with privacy services invoked.

We then hit aarpmembership.org - a domain registered to the AARP, but not without hits going out to revsci.net registered to the "Audience Science" company, triggit.com, securepaths.com a private domain with no functional homepage, google-analytics.com (that's normal - a way for website owners to track visits), a single pixel is served by rubiconproject.com - a company that does "yield optimization technology' whatever that is … a hit to openx.net another private domain with no homepage, and finally to doubleclick.net an ad network run by Google.

Illegal under CANSPAM

The unsubscribe link in the spam is : http://aarp.suusc.com/unsub/unsub.form?id=MUNGED but the spam itself fails to include a postal address of the sender and the beneficiary. Advertising mail without these elements are illegal under CANSPAM.

All-in-all a smorgasborg of consumer tracking, affiliate click-payments, and out-and-out spam, for the benefit of the AARP.org

CAUCE has sent a copy of this report to the AARP executive team (see below) with hopes that they will have some comments to make in this regard.

Comments

The AARP Are Spamming Again

The American Association of Retired Persons (AARP.org) have an unfortunate history of spamming. Their IPs and domain have been blacklisted more than once, and it appears they are up to their old tricks again.

Sketchy Sending Domain & IP

The sending domain, SOCIAL-PATH.INFO is fairly new, recently changed, and is hosted on IP 176.53.113.82, and IP owned by SUNUCU.ORG of Istanbul Turkey. The domain is also blacklisted at Spamhaus and SURBL

AFFILIATE SPAM

As is often the case in affiliate spam, this sets off a long series of browser redirections from URL to URL, usually too fast for the average users to be able to see. Google Chrome offers a way to track such things. I've included the full list, below, but will highlight a few of the domains and sites involved, and identify their owners, first.

The Clickthrough-Runaround

Then we are sent to clickbooth.com, owned by the same company. Another click is paid for - each hop earns someone (the sender/affiliate and the affiliate program owner) some money.

Then, off to sctracking.com - another domain with privacy services invoked.

We then hit aarpmembership.org - a domain registered to the AARP, but not without hits going out to revsci.net registered to the "Audience Science" company, triggit.com, securepaths.com a private domain with no functional homepage, google-analytics.com (that's normal - a way for website owners to track visits), a single pixel is served by rubiconproject.com - a company that does "yield optimization technology' whatever that is … a hit to openx.net another private domain with no homepage, and finally to doubleclick.net an ad network run by Google.

Illegal under CANSPAM

The unsubscribe link in the spam is : http://aarp.suusc.com/unsub/unsub.form?id=MUNGED but the spam itself fails to include a postal address of the sender and the beneficiary. Advertising mail without these elements are illegal under CANSPAM.

All-in-all a smorgasborg of consumer tracking, affiliate click-payments, and out-and-out spam, for the benefit of the AARP.org

CAUCE has sent a copy of this report to the AARP executive team (see below) with hopes that they will have some comments to make in this regard.